My first reaction to the headline -- from the front page teaser -- was that the article would be about how much liquor is being sold. From that I would hope the reporter would ask experts to comment on whether the hard times Michigan is facing is leading to the increase in liquor sales. And then what are the social concerns of more people feeling depressed (due to job loss) and drinking more.

Are drunk and disorderly arrests up?

How about domestic violence?

Divorces/separations?

But no. The 300-word article is about the formula for issuing liquor licenses and how the numbers are askew. Nothing at all about the actual flow of liquor.

I understand limited resources the newspaper has. But how hard would it have been to get some sample numbers of actual liquor sales? Up? Down? Has having more distribution points (bars) meant an increase in sales or are the sales just being spread out over more places?

And then, as I said before, there are the social issues.

Are more people spending more time in bars? If so, what does that do to the community and families?

TBH, I've been shouting at the reporting since the first day of the earthquake. Granted, most of it is pretty straight forward but there was/is enough to get me riled.

I worked on search and rescue during the 1985 Mexico City earthquakes (8.1 and 7.8). Most of the SAR techniques used in Haiti came from the experiences in Mexico. The SAR teams from the USA and Europe all credit the work done in Mexico as the reason their teams and training are set up the way they are.

Yet, there was nothing about this in the media reports. (Hint: GMU j-students, go talk to the Fairfax County special team that went to Haiti. They will explain how 1985 shaped what they are doing today.)

And now there are stories about Baptists, child trafficking and Dominican-Haitian relations.

Is it really too much to expect that there should be SOME explanatory grafs in these stories to talk about what is going on beyond the immediate?

Context! Context Context!

It sure seems to be missing in most of the stories I have seen/heard on Haiti.

So now we can look at how education and regular religious service attendance compare.

State

Ranking of religious attendance

Percentage of college graduates compared to population

Ranking of 50 states plus DC and PR for college graduates

Mississippi

1

12

51

Alabama

2

14

46

South Carolina

3

15

38

Louisiana

4

13

48

Utah

5

16

29

Tennessee

6

15

44

Arkansas

7

12

49

North Carolina

8

17

27

Georgia

9

17

24

Texas

10

16

37

Vermont

51

23

6

New Hampshire

50

22

7

Maine

49

18

18

Massachusetts

48

25

2

Nevada

47

14

44

Hawaii

46

20

13

Oregon

45

19

15

Alaska

44

16

28

Washington

43

20

11

Rhode Island

42

20

12

Connecticut

41

23

3

A similar pattern emerges when frequency of religious attendance is compared with a state’s ranking for populations with at least a 12th grade education but not a high school graduate.

This proves everything, right? Numbers don’t lie, do they?

It’s not so much that numbers don’t lie but they are not the whole story.

Nevada is #1 has 1.85% of its population with 12 years of schooling but no degree. It sits at number 44 among the states and territories for college graduates. And it is one of the least religious states in the survey.

Why do you think? (Hint: In what state is Las Vegas and Reno located? Another hint: What state showed the largest housing boom – and bust – in the past five years?)

The numbers get you started. And you can use them to help build the structure of your story but real work is explaining what the numbers mean and putting a human face to them.

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Oh, and it only took me about 45 minutes to look up the data on the Census Bureau web page, save the file as an Excel document and do the quick and dirty analysis. So "not having enough time" doesn't work as an excuse.

February 11, 2010

Ran across an article in Foreign Policy about what it means to be an "al Qaeda affiliate." I talk about it a bit on my global journalism blog (What does “al Qaeda affiliate” mean?).

But here I want to talk about making sure our students and colleagues use the right words to describe an event or action.

I was really upset with the way the U.S. media covered the Sean Goldman kidnapping case and subsequent return of 9-year old Sean to his father and the United States.

To read about the case in the American newspapers this case was a "custody" battle. And maybe in one sense it was but it was not "Kramer v. Kramer." The custody issue was settled long ago by a New Jersey court. The child was to live with his biological father.

This was a kidnapping case.

The mother left the country with her son under false pretenses. Divorced her husband and denied him access to his son.

David Goldman fought for visitation rights while the biological mother was alive. He also filed kidnapping charges against the mother under the Hague Convention.

Upon the mother's death, David filed for and won custody of the child in New Jersey.

The whole issue was one of returning a kidnapped child to his legal parent. There was no legal issue of custody. (Other than the "possession is 90 percent of the law" mentality that the Brazilian family had.)

Using the right words to describe events clarifies those events. It takes a little more effort to make sure the writing is done right but without that effort we are shortchanging our readers/viewers/listeners.